THE ABDUCTION OF EUROPA. OIL ON CANVAS. Probably 18TH CENTURY, AFTER VERONESE.
Antiques - Paintings
Reference: ZF0971
Rape of Europa. Oil on canvas. Probably 18th century, based on the model of Veronese, Paolo Caliari (Verona, 1528–Venice, 1588). Oil on canvas depicting a scene from classical mythology set in a natural landscape with leafy trees and a fragment of pyramid-shaped ruins in the background. Note (given her attire) that the female figure riding a white bull in the group on the left is the same one seen moving away on the animal on the right and, again, in the water in the background of the composition. Europa was a Phoenician princess who was abducted by Zeus: the god transformed into a white bull and mingled with the cattle kept by the girl's father. She saw him while she was picking flowers with her retinue of ladies, and upon seeing the bull, she approached it. After verifying that it was tame, she ended up riding it, at which point Zeus took the opportunity to carry her on his back to Crete, sailing into the sea. Paolo Caliari or Cagliari, better known as Paolo Veronese or Veronese, was a very important painter of the Venetian Mannerism. He depicted the same subject with a very similar composition in a canvas painted in 1573 and preserved in the Antecollegia of the Doge's Palace in Venice, and in another canvas dated between 1580 and 1585 that is in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. The present work is clearly based on the second painting mentioned above, as it was a frequent source of inspiration for numerous painters, particularly for Spanish scholarship recipients in Rome (the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid preserves another Rape of Europa inspired by the same Veronese work, but this one painted by Alejandro de la Cruz, a student of Mengs who was granted a scholarship in 1765 by the Academy in Rome).
· Size: 191x7x158 cms. 167x134 cms.
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